There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

The MardiGrass Organising Body has met with Lismore Council and
everything is on track officially for the 2011 annual weekend
of cannabis law reform activities. The MOB meets every friday
from 5pm at the Embassy (enter thru the HEMP Bar) and everyone
is welcome.
We are always keen for new ideas and input and especially local
volunteers.
We plan on being better organised with volunteers this year and
we may even have 'Team Leaders', or perhaps, 'Top Buds'. Local
knowledge is critical to guide the hordes of often non English
speaking backpackers who want to help out and locals wanting to
be part of this please register early at the Embassy. Same with
Jungle Patrollers.
Recycling at least the cans must happen this year and we are looking
for a club or non profit local group who will help take this on
and get the profits.
We also want to hear from creative souls who want to do street
theatre over the weekend. And remember the Happy High Herbs Float
Awards are on again.
A Mardigrass Comedy Cabaret on Saturday night is planned for the
Town Hall. We are hopeful Bob Dylan will judge the Buskers Comp
but he is not confirmed. The Bluesfest and Easter is the weekend
before Mardigrass this year so we expect quite a few people to
attend both.
Pot Art entries can be brought into the HEMP Bar (if they fit!)
and will be displayed in cafes around the village.
The Big Question? We inspected Peace Park, the Home of the Hemp
Olympix, and expect no dramas fitting in with the new skatepark
which should be well and truly finished by then. It looks like
a MardiGrass Skatecomp will in fact become a new Hemp Olympix
Gold Medal event though we havn't quite worked out the details!
Is there a Nimbin Skaters Club? Please come to a MOB meeting!

The Peace Park Main Stage will be repositioned closer
to Sibley Street we expect. So far the music line up is: OKA,
Anarchist Duck, King Farook, CC The Cat, Nathan Kaye, elseWhere,
Bertha Control, The 50 bags, Irie Knights, Pagan Love Cult, Kaptan
Reefer, Nigel Mctrustry, A French Butler Called Smith, Fyah Walk,
John dourvis, Johny Ganja and a few more to throw in the mix bowl..

MardiGrass 2011 has been inspired by Proposition 19 in California.
Even though the vote was lost, cannabis law reform got a lot of
attention and we will be doing our best this year to bring Australia
up to date with what's happening in North America.
Dr Bob Melamede will be at MardiGrass again with new evidence
on cannabis eradicating cancer and another director from Cannabis
Science Inc.
Activists Alison Myrden, Lisa “Mamakind” Kirkman from
Skunk Magazine and Englishman Frank Kirk are booked in as is Sandra
Kanck, former leader of the Democrats in SA Parliament. Regular
supporters Dr's Alex Wodak, Paul Wilson and Andrew Katelaris are
all coming and we hope to have some local industrial hemp crops
to play with and hear about now NSW farmers can plant hemp seed.

Ganja Faeries are the light spirit
of the herb, the essential humour of indulging in it, the cheeky
and naughty side, if you like. They're the ones who tickle your
funnybone and make you laugh, and dance with you awhile along
your way, then appear again in your dreams. They share a collective
wisdom of living with cannabis. They help you to remember that
the herb is healing in many wonderful ways and that the drug laws
are very stupid. If you like, YOU can be a Ganja Faerie too. To
be a dancing Ganja Faerie tho' you need to come to rehearsals...

Ganja Faerie rehearsals
in April at the Community Centre Market Stage 5:30pm each Friday
until MardiGrass

The MOB wishes to extend a welcome and many thanks
for those who donate their time and finances during this event,
without you it could not happen. All volunteers should register
with the Hemp Embassy leaving a contact phone or email in the
shop. MOB meetings have sort of started and you will find key
organizers in the Hemp Bar from 4.20pm on Fridays.

Event tickets including a campsite are already
for sale for the weekend of April 30th and May 1st, 2011……….
Not so far away now.

Treating Yourself magazine is excited to host the upcoming
2nd annual Treating Yourself Expo in June of 2011 at the Metro
Toronto Convention Centre. We want you to be a part of it. Mark
June 3rd - 5th, 2011 on your calendar and join patients, their
friends and loved ones, professionals, distributors, manufacturers
from the Alternative Medicine , Hemp , and the Medical Cannabis
industries from across North America, Europe and other parts
of the World. Showcase, demonstrate, educate you about their
products.

Counting patients, vendors, medical and professionals from
the alternative medicine and hemp industries among it’s
expected attendance of 20,000+. Treating Yourself Magazine’s
2nd annual Expo promises to be a world stage like no other seen
before in Canada, offering three days of networking, learning,
advertising, and vending in an interactive, inclusive environment.

Don’t miss your chance to be a part of this extraordinary
event!

Treating Yourself .Com was founded in May 2002 by Marco Renda.
In 2005 we started our publication and is now distributed in
countries world-wide, Treating Yourself is a journal written
for patients, by patients. Our mission is to build awareness,
generate interest, educate and provide our readers (which include
medical cannabis, alternative medicine users, members of the
hemp community, their caregivers, professionals in this and
related industries) with conscientious, ethical, and reliable
information to assist them with the management of their wide
and varied health needs and provide them with access to safe
and reliable products.

To help us achieve this goal, the 2011 Expo will be hosting
a series of workshops, seminars, documentaries and short films
on subjects like alternative medicine , medical cannabis, activism,
security and safety, nutrition, hemp, cooking, and more.

This one-of-a-kind event will also have a government-approved
4000 square foot vapor lounge to accommodate medical cannabis
patients who can feel comfortable and relaxed medicating. While
there is absolutely no selling or distributing of cannabis permitted
at the Expo, we encourage patients to bring their own medicine
along with them, as vaporizers of all makes and models will
be available for use. These include, but are not limited to
the HerbalAire, and the De-Verdamper. Our hope is to give patients
an opportunity to determine which type is most suitable for
their individual needs.

PROBABLY the least significant of the issues raised by the
arrest of Matthew Chesher for allegedly possessing a single
ecstasy tablet is its political effect.

More important is the way the case highlights society's attitude
to drugs. Recreational drug use is now so common that any who
do indulge themselves are only reflecting the contemporary attitudes
of a wide section of the public.

Experience should have taught us by now that existing drug
policies are deeply flawed. We have argued previously that the
war-on-drugs approach is counterproductive - in creating a lucrative
and corrupting black market - and also essentially hypocritical
- in that it divides recreational drugs with more or less dangerous
side effects into two groups, legal and illegal, and permits
and encourages use of some while condemning the rest. There
is little basis besides custom and tradition for the distinction.
Legal alcohol is notorious for the violence it fuels; legal
tobacco is often lethal over time; the main drawback to illegal
ecstasy is dehydration, though its long-term effects are unclear
and may indeed be just as bad.

That drug laws are often flouted by otherwise law-abiding people
is not evidence of widespread wickedness taking root, but of
the contempt felt by many ordinary citizens at the double standard
involved over what they believe is essentially a private matter.
It is time for a calm and reasoned debate on how drug policy
might be changed to reflect contemporary behaviour, to preserve
a safe community, and to ensure the law does not fall into contempt.

In the August 2010 federal election, for perhaps the first
time in Australia, the two candidates for prime minister had
admitted previous cannabis use. The US President has admitted
previous use of cannabis and cocaine. His predecessor denied
cannabis use but was caught on tape admitting it. The previous
US president claimed to have smoked cannabis but not inhaled.
In November, 46 per cent of Californians voted to tax and regulate
cannabis. In Britain, it is estimated that about 50 million
ecstasy tablets are consumed a year. Australia could not maintain
police or military forces if all new recruits admitting previous
illicit drug use were rejected.

It's high time we swept away our cant and hypocrisy on illicit
drugs. Let's admit that most people taking illicit drugs do
so because they enjoy the experience. Let's make low-level drug
use a health and social issue and stop pretending it is a crime.

… and drug punishment

HINTS are appearing of welcome change in Asia's stern attitude
to the death penalty. Of most immediate import to Australians
is the opinion of a panel of three judges at the Denpasar District
Court in Bali, as reported by the Herald yesterday, about the
appeal by the two convicted ringleaders of the Bali nine heroin-smuggling
operation against their death sentences.

Strikingly, they asserted that the right to life was ''the
most basic of rights inherent to man and is universal and eternal''
and must not be taken away ''by anyone''. Their opinion will
be considered by the Indonesian Supreme Court in its hearing
of the appeals by Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Despite
this sweeping statement, the judges do not completely challenge
the rights and morality of judicial execution, as they suggest
it can be reserved for ''the most serious of crime''. But the
opinion is a great divergence from the hitherto prevailing sentiment
in Indonesia's political and judicial circles.

Should it be taken up by the Supreme Court, which is also hearing
an appeal by the other Bali nine convict on death row, the drug
courier Scott Rush, and result in commutation of the sentences,
it would remove an issue causing anguish among many Australians.
It would also mean the issue does not reach the desk of the
President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who would have the final
option of granting clemency if the appeal fails.

Or at least it would do so temporarily, as already at least
one other Australian is in potential jeopardy of the death penalty.
Preventing future flare-ups needs more formal alignment of the
two neighbours' legal systems towards crime and punishment,
particularly on illegal drugs. And it has to be said that Indonesia
is by no means the harshest and least flexible in its region.

Asian countries, along with the United States and those in
the Middle East, form most of the one-third of the world's nations
still applying capital punishment. But shifts are occurring.
In Japan, where hangings are mostly now saved for multiple murderers,
the new Justice Minister, Satsuki Eda, is a vocal opponent of
capital punishment and has ordered his department to prepare
a review of policy about it. South Korea's top court ruled last
year that capital punishment is constitutional, but executions
stopped in 1997 and seem unlikely to resume. It is perhaps not
coincidental that Japanese and South Koreans are now among the
most prosperous, egalitarian and educated peoples in the region.

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